


What Seems Real

by yourbeautysfading



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Mental Instability
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-01 18:52:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourbeautysfading/pseuds/yourbeautysfading
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kevin Tran was planning to go to Princeton, to become the first Asian American president of the United States. Then Sam and Dean Winchester come into his life. At first, they come to him in dreams or daydreams, but then he starts believing he sees them in his everyday life. Will Kevin be able to discern reality from the strange world his mind is trying to pull him into, or will the lines blur too much and the worlds intertwine?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Waking Up

The first thing he noticed was his aching back, the pounding in his head, and the fact that the world seemed too bright on the other side of his closed eyelids. There was a noise coming from somewhere in the room. Kevin opened his eyes, immediately having to squint as the sunlight streamed through the blinds. He wasn’t on his bed; he quickly realized he was on his floor. Groaning, the teenager lifted a hand and rubbed his face before sitting up. His cello was in pieces strewn about the floor and his windows were shattered, making him wonder just what had happened and how long he’d been out. He knew he should be freaking out because something obviously happened, but he was so disoriented. Nothing was making sense right then. His whole body hurt. Had he been struck by lightning or something? He did remember a blinding light and pain… He blinked, and the noise became distinguishable: it was his phone vibrating on his desk. Kevin reached for it, still feeling detached from his body. “Hello?”

“Kevin?” Channing’s voice came from the other end of the line. “Kevin, where are you? You know the SAT is starting in thirty minutes, and we were supposed to meet up before that!”

Startled, Kevin looked at the clock. Shoot. He was going to be late! “I’ll be right there.” He hung up his phone and scrambled out of the floor. His clothes were rumpled and the same ones he’d worn to school the day before, but he didn’t have time to change. He stopped only long enough to use the bathroom, stomp his feet into some shoes, shoulder his bag, grab his keys, and run out the door. He arrived at the testing facility as everyone was taking a seat. He slid into the empty desk beside Channing and lined his pencils on his desk and set his calculator to one side. 

“What happened to you?” she whispered. “You’re never late to anything.”

“I overslept.” It was the best excuse he could come up with, yet she didn’t seem to buy it. The test administrator stepped to the front of the room then, ending any more questioning Channing may have tried to initiate. The rules were established, and then the tests were distributed. Kevin immediately set to work, his concentration solely on the questions before him. 

_“What the hell is this thing?” a tall, broad-shouldered man asked, lifting a rounded stone close to his face and inspecting it._

_“I don’t know. But whatever it is, Dick wants it. Bad,” a taller man with shoulder length hair responded._

_“Yeah, no shit. It looks like, uh… hieroglyphics? Like Ancient Egyptian shit. Except more chicken scratches and less like actual pictures.”_

_“It’s definitely not ancient Egyptian,” the other laughed. “Maybe it’s some sort of cave writing… but that wouldn’t explain why it was encased in another stone. Or why it was so valuable to him.”_

_The shorter one hummed softly. “I bet it’s telling about what a great lay some cavechick was. You know, bathroom stall stuff. ‘Go to her cave for a good time.’”_

_“Or it could be gossip about what a dumbass Dean is.”_

_The first to speak looked up at his companion, eyebrows raised and a slight smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “I think I’m pretty awesome, thanks.” His phone rang then, and he pulled it out of the pocket of his leather jacket. “Hello? … Meg? What? He’s—When?” As he listened intently to the person on the other end of the line, the taller male took the stone from him, tracing over the surface of it with his fingers. Soon, the other, Dean, hung up. “Cas is awake.”_

_“What?” The tall one’s attention shot from the stone to the other._

_“Last night after that freak storm. Meg said he woke up but hasn’t been acting like himself. We gotta get out there. Maybe he knows what this thing is. C’mon, Sam.”_

_“We need to research that storm, too, Dean. I mean, we broke open that rock and then the storm came, and Cas woke up. It can’t be coincidental. I think it’s all connected somehow.”_

_“So we’ll stop at a diner on the way there and you can see what you can find out. Throw the world’s earliest classifieds into that bag and let’s get out of here. Dick’s men are probably headed to find us now, anyway, so we shouldn’t stay in one place for too long.”_

_“Good thinking.” Sam placed the stone in a duffel, zipped it, and then shouldered the bag. The two men left the room._

Kevin didn’t know how long he’d been staring at this particular question, his pencil hovering in the air above his answer sheet but not making contact with the paper. He blinked. What had that been? Why in the world was he suddenly daydreaming about two random men when he was in the middle of taking the most important test of his life up to that point? He had taken the SAT before, but this was his last chance to make a perfect score. He should have been concentrating on getting finished, but instead his mind was going… he didn’t even know where it was going or who those guys were or why his brain seemed to believe they were more important than his future. The teenager blinked again, then shook his head. His hair was brushed out of his face, and he reread the question, forcing himself to focus once more. He had already wasted too much time. He couldn’t do that again. Before long, he had picked up the pace.

A few hours and three pencils later, Kevin slammed his pencil onto the desk and turned his answer sheet over, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. A slow smile passed over his lips. He was finished with the test, and he thought he’d done well. He had only gotten sidetracked once or twice, and never as badly as he had that first time. The test had been pretty easy. Hopefully he would make a perfect score, or at least an incredibly high score, and it’d be enough to help him get into Princeton. Now he just had to work on his college admission essay. He still had nothing to say in it. 

Kevin had a strict policy that, unless he found something that contradicted a previous answer, he only looked over his final answers once if he had enough time. Some people looked over their answers too many times and second guessed themselves. Kevin was confident in his answers, but he turned his paper back over and looked at the answers one time, mostly to make sure he hadn’t accidentally skipped a question. Once satisfied, he settled back in his seat, breathing a sigh of relief.

_“So I found something,” Sam said, taking a bite of a salad. Dean looked at the other from over his double bacon cheeseburger._

_“Sock it to me. What’ve you got?” he asked before biting into his burger. Sam grimaced as grease and condiments dripped from the burger onto the wrapper._

_“You know you’re going to have clogged arteries in no time if you eat like that, right? I can practically hear them crying at your stupidity.”_

_“Shut up,” Dean said around a mouthful of food, smirking at Sam._

_“Okay. In all seriousness, though. Apparently last night, hospitals within a hundred mile radius were practically overrun with women going into labor. Guess when it started?”_

_“Same time we cracked that rock?”_

_“Same time we cracked the rock.” Sam’s gaze was on the computer screen as he scrolled through a record, eating his salad slowly. They ate in silence, not raising the questions they both had about what was in the bag in the booth beside Sam. Upon finishing, Dean paid, and the two left, heading to a sleek, black, 1967 Chevy Impala. Dean ran his fingertips over the hood of the car almost in reverence before opening his door, and –_

“Please put down your pencils as our test administrators take up your tests.” Kevin frowned, shaking his head again. It was those same guys! Who were they, and why were they bombarding his thoughts? Was he turning into a homosexual? He didn't think he was, but if he was sitting here daydreaming about guys… 

He handed over his test and stood, raising his arms over his head as he stretched his back. They dropped as he let out a sigh. His pencils and calculator were gathered, and then he and Channing walked out of the test center toward their cars.

“You’re still wearing what you wore yesterday,” she observed.

“I fell asleep studying, I guess, and I overslept.”

“Right. Do you want to go out to eat now that we’re done with this? Maybe we could see a movie, too. We haven’t gotten to go on any kind of date in a while because we’ve been preparing for this.”

“I wish I could.” Kevin frowned. “I have to pick my mom up from the airport today. But we can tomorrow.” Channing nodded her agreement and smiled.

“Tomorrow then. Don’t oversleep,” she teased, making him roll his eyes. They said their goodbyes and went to their cars. Kevin opened the door and slipped into the driver’s seat of his car, folding his arms on the steering wheel and resting his head on his arms. He felt nauseous, though he wasn’t really sure why. He still had a splitting headache, which he’d mostly ignored during the test but was now feeling come back with a vengeance. What was happening to him? Had he really been struck by lightning? If so, it would explain what happened to his cello, but what about the windows? Would they have shattered like they did? And how did the house not catch on fire? Maybe he just imagined that. But if it was imagined, what really happened? Regardless, his mother was going to be so mad when she got home.

Maybe he should go to the doctor or the hospital, though, and get checked out. Just to be safe. He’d go pick his mom up, try to explain to her what had happened, and then go to the hospital. That would be his best bet. Straightening, Kevin ran a hand through his hair before turning on the car. He needed to head to the airport. His phone was checked, although he’d received no voicemails while he was in the test. Good. She hadn’t landed yet then. His iPod was connected to the auxillary cord and turned on, and with a playlist of Beethoven and Bach starting, he backed out of his parking space, soon enough leaving the parking lot. As he drove, his mind continuously tried to wander, but he kept reigning his thoughts back in. There was no time for daydreaming.

Then he saw it. The stone that Dean and Sam had been looking at wasn’t just a stone; it was a tablet of some kind. An image of the front flashed across his mind, making his grip on the steering wheel tighten. The tablet was his. He didn’t know where it came from or why he felt that way, but he knew it belonged to him, and he had to get it back.

Kevin turned his phone off. Instead of taking the exit to go to the airport, he continued driving straight.


	2. Meeting the Winchesters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few scenes were written from the episode "Reading is Fundamental." Some of them were written exactly, but other scenes had variations. Credits to the writers and producers of Supernatural for those scenes.

Kevin still wasn’t sure how he’d gotten past the guards. He remembered assessing the entrance of the mental institution from an area on the outskirts of the yard. He acted as though he knew how to break in places—er, sneak in without getting caught—and take back his rightful belongings. He didn’t know the first thing about committing crimes, though. The next thing he knew, however, he was in the institution, having not only made it past security but the night nurses milling through the hallways. He felt like he was invisible, that he had the ability to melt into the shadows or dissolve into particles of light to blend in to the dim, fluorescent lit hallways. He had never been in the institution, yet he walked through the halls, turning down first this hall and then that one, with a familiarity of a patient who had spent most of his life in the building. There was a pull coming from the tablet, leading him onward and not allowing him to focus on anything other than to his mission to retrieve the precious object. When he reached the room, he glanced into the window of the doorway. The room was empty, and there on the floor—there was the duffel.

He tried the handle, finding the door gave way easily and swung silently open on its hinges. Kevin stepped over the threshold, looking once more around the room and then up and down the hall. He eased his way into the room and grabbed the bag. It was heavy, allowing him to know without checking that, yes, the tablet was there. Clutching the duffel to his chest, Kevin bolted from the room and down the hall. He had done it. He had taken the tablet from those guys. It was in his possession where it belonged. Adrenaline rushed through his bloodstream, filling him with an exhilaration he couldn’t remember feeling ever before. He was almost at the door when he heard a voice: “Hey! That’s my bag!” Kevin glanced over his shoulder, seeing the giant from his daydreams. His eyes widened, and he gripped the bag tighter. When he reached the doors to the entrance, he pushed them open with his shoulder and continued running, taking the stairs two and three at a time. He had heard the man coming after him. The exhilaration was replaced with a nearly paralyzing fear, but he didn’t allow himself to stop. If he stopped, he would die. The Goliath would shatter his skull with a single blow of his fist.

Sprinting through the yard, he heard the man hit the pavement behind him. Kevin tried to scream, to warn the others in the building so that maybe, maybe he would be saved and this madman would be shackled or _something_. All that came out was a pathetic, wavering, high-pitched little whine. He zigzagged through the yard, dodging around trees and trying not to slip over the fallen leaves that had yet to be raked, but it did no good. The giant was gaining on him, his long legs closing the distance with every stride. He had to keep running faster, faster. He had to get away! He was not going to die tonight if he could help it. The adrenaline sent him surging onward, but it wasn’t enough. He was a goner. It was probably best he start trying to mentally say his goodbyes, but he couldn’t focus enough to think of who to start saying goodbye to. The mantra _Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye you_ resonated in his mind in time with his footfalls. “No! Stop! Leave me alone!” he cried out, not realizing the words were escaping his lips until they hung in the air and fell upon deaf ears.

In his panic, the girl coming into his path and holding out an arm was unnoticed. Kevin ran directly into her arm, the force enough to send him sprawling onto his back, the bag still clutched to his chest. His chest heaved as he looked up at her. He blinked, and his vision blurred.

“Not a demon or a chomper. What the hell are you?” the girl asked. Kevin had no idea what she was talking about. She must have been out of her mind, too. The giant lumbered over to them, as well, and the two stared down at Kevin. 

“I’m, uh… Kevin Tran. I’m in Advanced Placement. P-p-p-please don’t kill me.” He hadn’t meant to beg, but it was the last thing he could do. The two looked at each other, then back down at him.

“I’m not going to kill you,” the giant spoke, sounding incredulous. Kevin racked his brain, trying to remember what this man had been called when he’d seen him before. “Okay, buddy. Get up.” He leaned down, grabbing Kevin by the shirt and hauling him to his feet. Kevin stared at him with huge eyes. The man curled a fist around the handles of the duffel bag and went to pull it away; Kevin clutched it tighter.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice wavering once more. The man tried again, jerking Kevin forward with the force put behind the movement. Still he didn’t release the bag. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why, but I can’t… I can’t let go of this.”

“What are you talking about?” the man asked.

“It’s mine, and I can’t… I have to protect it. I’m sorry.” The man stared at him. Kevin blinked, looking down at the bag, and the man’s name dawned on him. He lifted his gaze once more. “You’re Sam, aren’t you?”

Now it was the giant’s turn to look surprised. “I—Have we met?” Kevin shook his head. “How did you know my name?” The teenager shook his head again, and Sam sighed. “Let’s just go back inside. We need to talk to Castiel.” His hand rested on the back of Kevin’s neck, making the boy tense. Sam led him back into the institution, followed by Meg. They returned to the room where the bag had been, and Kevin took a seat on the bed. He opened the duffel, frowning when he picked up pieces of the rock. 

“You _broke_ it?!” he exclaimed angrily. “How could you break this? Do you not realize how important it is?” The two pieces were held together, and this time it was Kevin that nearly dropped the tablet when the two pieces melded together, forming one larger piece. “…What just happened? How did I--?” He trailed off, looking to Sam and the dark haired woman beside him, but they looked just as confused as he was. If he could put two pieces back together, though, however he’d done it, maybe he could put the entire tablet back together. Piece by piece, the tablet was removed from the duffel bag and added together until it was whole once more.

“Who are you?” Sam asked, a sharp tone of disbelief coloring his words. Kevin ignored him, staring at the stone in his hands. The man watched him, then turned to Meg. “Do you have any ideas?” he asked, hating the fact that he was asking a demon her opinion. At the same time, Meg was lifting her hands.

“Don’t look at me,” she said defensively. “I only knew about you two coming to see Castiel. I didn’t authorize anyone else coming here.”

“Where’s Dean when you--?”

“Why do you have something about leviathans?” Kevin interrupted, sounding confused. “Leviathans… like the biblical creatures leviathans?” The boy looked up from the tablet, finding Sam and Meg staring at him.

“You can _read_ that?” Sam asked incredulously.

“Sort of. It’s hard, but if I focus…”

“And it’s about leviathans?”

“Yes. Why are you carrying around a tablet about them? If they were real, they’ve been dead for—“

“Does it say how to kill them?”

“What?”

“That tablet, does it say how to kill leviathans?”

“I…” Kevin watched Sam, whose voice had taken on a tone of insistence he hadn’t expected to hear. “I don’t know.”

“Well, read it and tell me, dammit!” The lights flickered then, causing the man to look away from Kevin. The woman looked around.

“Something’s happening,” she murmured, and when her gaze landed on Kevin, her eyes were entirely back. Kevin gasped, scrambling back on the bed. What _was_ she? She wasn’t a normal human being. Normal humans didn’t have eyes that could go entirely black and switch back to regular eyes with a blink like hers did. But was there such a thing as inhuman … humans? Kevin didn’t know. There was a rustling in the room, and when he looked away from the woman and Sam, two more people were in the room—a man in a suit and a blonde woman that definitely had not been there just a second before and definitely had _not_ waltzed through the doorway that Sam was blocking. He scooted up on the bed until his back hit the wall, signaling that he had nowhere else to go. He was trapped. The woman flicked her wrist, and Sam flew across the room, crashing into the wall. Kevin’s eyes widened, and his gaze snapped from the crumpled man to the woman across the room.

“Prophet of the Lord,” she spoke, her gaze on Kevin. "A demon and a Winchester _would_ be behind taking you. Come with us.”

 _Prophet of the Lord._ “W-what? Me?” Kevin asked, gripping the tablet to his chest and watching the woman from underneath his black fringe of bangs. She didn’t have a chance to say anything else before there was another rustling sound, and when he looked, two _more_ people were in the room. One of them was Dean. The other was a man in all white and a trench coat. He had a goofy grin on his face and didn’t seem like he was entirely there. Was this his room? He looked like a patient.

“Castiel,” the woman breathed, and then she turned on her heel and started toward the man in the trench coat. “You _left_. All that talk of a revolution, of things getting better, and then you _disappeared_.”

“Hester,” he started, but she interrupted him. “What the _hell_ was that?”

“Rude, for one.” 

“What happened to you?” the man in the suit asked, his voice soft, sounding hurt. The one addressed as Castiel looked to him, his expression softening. 

“Oh, Inias. There’s so much you don’t understand. If I could only explain.” Castiel tried to explain then, but his words were disjointed, phrases starting and stopping and changing direction of his original point. He was fumbling to find the words, words that he really didn’t have to explain actions the angels would never truly understand. Hester and Inias watched him silently, but then Hester spoke up.

“Castiel, you’re a fool. We’re taking the prophet to the desert where he belongs to study the Word of God.” Meg stepped forward as if to challenge Hester, holding out an angel blade. 

“He’s not going anywhere with you.”

“Where did you get that?” Hester asked, eyeing the blade before looking to the other woman in suspicion. Meg opened her mouth, but no words came out.

Dean spoke for her instead. “I hate to break up this little family gathering, but you all have got to go.” The others all turned to look at him. Dean had drawn a bloody symbol on the wall, and when he pressed his hand in the middle of it, a blinding light filled the room. Once it subsided, Kevin saw that Castiel, Hester, and Inias had disappeared. They had disappeared _into thin air_. What was going on? This was some weird science fiction movie or a dream or something. This—this couldn’t be real. “They’ll only be gone for a short amount of time. We need to get out of here, get somewhere that we can ward properly. Sam, grab the bag and--“

Kevin’s shoulders were shaking, his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. It was like trying to breathe underwater—impossible and painful. His chest burned, and no matter how deep of a breath he sucked in, it wasn’t deep enough. He felt like he was going to suffocate. “ _What’s happening?!_ ” The words came out much louder than he’d meant for them to come out. It caught the attention of the remaining three people in the room. Dean quirked a brow as he looked at him, and Sam’s brow furrowed. “ _What’s. Happening?!_ ”

“What the hell is that?” Dean asked flatly, sounding unamused.

“That’s, uh, Kevin Tran,” Sam started uncertainly. “He’s, uh…. In Advanced Placement.” Kevin’s chest was still heaving, his eyes wild as he looked between the other three. Dean sighed, shaking his head a bit. He didn’t even know what that had to do anything or why this kid was there, but the way he was gripping the tablet—the tablet that had somehow melded back into one piece—let Dean know that he wasn’t releasing it any time soon. He decided to be blunt with him.

“Well, kid, that symbol there,” he started, pointing to the bloody drawing on the wall, “is an angel banishing sigil. The other three people in the room, those were angels. And I banished them. And that rock you’re holding is the Word of God, and I don’t know why you think you’re entitled to hold it or where the hell you came from, but uh, we need it back, and you need to scram. We’ve got work to do.”

“Dean, did you not hear Hester?” Sam asked.

At the same time, Kevin spoke, his voice quaking slightly but his words still bold. “I’m not giving this up. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“ _What?_ ” Dean asked sharply, though it was unclear whether he was speaking to Sam or to Kevin.

“Hester called him a prophet. And Dean, he can read the tablet.”

“Right. Of course this kid from bum-fuck nowhere can read a language that no one, not even the angels can read, and you want me to believe that he—“

“He said it’s about leviathans, Dean.”

Dean studied his brother, then looked to Kevin once more. “You’re telling me that rock talks about leviathans?”

Kevin nodded slowly. He realized his breathing had started to slow a bit, and his heart no longer felt as though it was about to burst out of his chest. “They’re… they’re real, aren’t they?” he asked, his voice small. Sam nodded, looking almost sympathetic.

“Does it say how to kill them?” Sam repeated his question from earlier. “Because that’s kind of been a problem.”

“I don’t know,” Kevin replied again. “It’s hard to focus on and read for too long, and there’s a lot of words I… I’d have to translate because—“

“Change of plans,” Dean interrupted. “We really don’t have time to just sit here and keep talking. Sam, grab the duffel. Kid—“

“It’s Kevin.”

“Right. Since you’re not going to let go of that tablet, get up and follow me. You’re gonna come with us.” 

“What about my ca—“

“You’re coming with us,” he repeated firmly. “Castiel will catch up with us. Meg… Meg, I hate to say it, but you’re coming with us, too. Now let’s get out of here.” Dean turned, walking out of the door. Meg followed, and Sam grabbed the bag and shouldered it before looking to Kevin. 

“We need you to help us, Kevin,” he said with a small smile. “If you can just translate that tablet for us, help us defeat the leviathans… that’s all you’ll have to do. Then you can go back to your normal life, and you won’t see us again. But a lot of people are dying, and without your help, a lot more will die.”

“You promise that’s all I have to do?” Kevin asked, and Sam held his gaze before looking away.

“Come on then.”

It wasn’t a good answer, but what choice did Kevin have? If it was true that people were dying, he had to do something. He moved off the bed, still clutching the tablet, and followed behind the others. They went to the same Impala he’d seen in his daydream earlier in the day. It was in amazing condition. Kevin mentally flipped through Kelly’s Blue Book as he estimated the value of that car, but he didn’t have time to decide before Dean was telling him to get in the damn car. Kevin folded himself into the back seat and buckled in. Meg was beside him, behind Sam. Dean was in the driver’s seat, where he belonged. It was obvious this was his car, and although he had no proof, Kevin believed that Dean was severely possessive of the car, that he didn’t let other people—not even Sam—drive it. It was probably his baby. The engine was started, and Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” filled the car as they left the parking lot of the institution.

_~Hello_  
 _Is there anybody in there?_  
 _Just nod if you can hear me_  
 _Is there anyone home?~_

“Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Shit. Shit, shit, _shit_.” Kevin groaned softly, and a relieved sounding laugh came from whoever had been speaking to him. “You’re waking up? Thank God. Hey, can you hear me? Hey. Hey!”

The teenager felt something hard stabbing into his chest. He opened his eyes slowly, and they had almost adjusted to the darkness when a light was shone in his face, momentarily blinding him. “Where am I?” he asked, forcing himself to sit up. He realized what had been shoved into his chest was a steering wheel, and he heard shattered glass fall as he sat up. The teenager brushed it from his hair, looking at the cuts on his arms as a result of the glass.

“You’re about two miles down Route 27,” the man replied. “I don’t know how long you’ve been here. I was on my way home and I saw your car off the side of the road, figured I’d better check to see if you were okay."

“How am I driving?” he asked dumbly.

“Uh… Well, you’re not right now. Are you okay?”

Kevin looked around. “Where are Dean and Sam? And Meg?”

“Who?” Kevin repeated the names, looking expectantly at the man. “You were the only one in the SUV.”

“SUV?” he repeated. His mom’s car was an SUV. He’d driven it to the test and was driving it to go pick her up from the airport when he’d changed his route. But the last he knew, he’d been in the backseat of the Impala. “I was in an Impala. A ’67, in the back seat.”

The man shook his head. “I think you have a concussion. You need to go to the hospital… I’ve already called 911, so they should be dispatching someone. I’ll stay here and wait with you until—“

“Where’s the tablet?” he asked, completely ignoring what the man was telling him. “I need the tablet.”

“I don’t know what you’re—“

“It’s gone?!” Kevin hit the steering wheel and then leaned forward, resting his forehead against said steering wheel. “What am I going to do?! I needed that. I’m supposed to translate it. I… I…” He sat back up. “I need to call my mom.”

“You need to relax.”

_~Relax_  
 _I’ll need some information first~_

_“What’re you pouting about, Kev?” Dean asked, glancing in the rearview mirror._

_“Just… everything is going wrong, and it’s all happening so fast. What happened to me? To my life? How did it come to this?”_

_~Just the basic facts_  
 _Can you show me where it hurts?~_

“W-what?” Kevin blinked, looking at the man standing outside of his SUV.

“Can you tell me if you’re hurt, if anywhere hurts?” he repeated. “You’re pretty banged up, but I think that besides the concussion, you’re gonna come out of this okay. I don’t think you were hurt too badly. Still won’t hurt for you to get checked out by some doctors, though.”

“No… No. I just need to call my mom. I was supposed to pick her up at the airport.” Kevin found his phone and turned it on. His phone was flooded with texts, but he ignored them and dialed his mother’s phone number.

“Kevin?!” she answered on the first ring, sounding borderline hysterical.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Kevin! Where are you? Are you all right? You didn’t come to the airport and I’ve been trying to call you, but your phone has been off and—“

“I’m fine, Mom. I’m on Route 27. I was in a wreck and—“

“You _what_? Where are you on that road? Are you hurt? Is anyone else hurt? What happened?”

“Apparently I’m about two miles down it? I don’t know. The man who found me is here with me. He said he’d stay until the police got here. I don’t know what happened; I guess I fell asleep at the wheel. No one else was in the wreck, and I’m fine. But can you come pick me up?” Linda started to ask more questions, but Kevin cut her off. “I really don’t want to talk about it now. We can when I get home or you pick me up. Please, Mom?” Finally, she agreed, and he let the man, who identified himself as Rob, tell his mother exactly where he was off the road. Once the phone was hung up, Kevin got out of the SUV. Rob put down the tailgate of his truck, and the two took a seat on it as they waited for the police to arrive. “Thank you for helping me,” he murmured.

“Don’t thank me. It’s what any decent human being would have done.” Kevin said nothing to that. Rob spoke to him, though he wasn’t sure if it was because Rob was nervous, bored, or just trying to keep him from falling asleep since the man was convinced he had a concussion. Kevin spoke when appropriate, his gaze locked on the darkened road. 

Headlights appeared around a curve up the road. Kevin watched as they approached, squinting as they grew brighter. As it passed, Kevin heard classic rock pouring out of its windows. There was a street light a little way down the road. When the car neared the street light, Kevin saw it: the Impala. It was too dark to see the passengers, but he knew it was Sam and Dean. He straightened quickly, pointing at the car. “That’s Sam and Dean!” he exclaimed.

The man looked down the road, then back at Kevin, his brow creased with worry. “Just relax, Kevin. It’s been a stressful night.”

“What are you talking about?” he snapped, looking past Rob at the straight stretch of road. He should have still been able to see the taillights. There was a sinking in his stomach as Rob next spoke, confirming what he was seeing with his own eyes.

“There’s nothing there, Kevin. Nothing at all.”


End file.
